HOLLYWOOD (Variety)Is someone trying to jinx leading contender Good Will Hunting’s chances for a screenwriting Oscar? Perhaps a competitor’s sour grapes over the film’s success?

A curious set of potentially damaging rumors none of them, evidently, with any foundation is making the rounds about the script that earned Matt Damon and Ben Affleck an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

“This has been going on for months,” said Tony Angellotti, a spokesman for Miramax Films. “The calls are coming in anonymously. Who’s got the most to gain?”

There was one murmur to the effect that Damon and Affleck had bought the story from someone else; another that the script had been written by veteran William Goldman; and a third (pointed out by at least one person with no obvious ax to grind) that Damon had initially written the story at Harvard as a one-act play. The latter was conceivably the most devastating, jeopardizing the Best Original Screenplay nomination if it could be proven that the story had been performed or published beforehand. Damon’s association with the play has been widely reported—everywhere from the February 13 issue of Entertainment Weekly to the March 12 issue of Daily Variety.

It could all come down to simple confusion. For the record, according to Angellotti, Damon bought the title, not the story, from a friend at Harvard; Goldman worked on the script with Affleck and Damon for one day while the project was at production company Castle Rock, and later praised their talents; and Damon wrote the first third of the work—one act—for a class at Harvard. Damon, reached at last week’s ShoWest convention in Las Vegas by Angellotti, insisted the story was never performed as a play.

Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, said the writers’ branch executive committee, which handles nods for screenwriting, was “real tough” on its requirements for nominations and would have slotted Good Will Hunting into the “material previously produced or published” category had there been any indication that it should not be in the “original screenplay” group.

Academy spokesman John Pavlik confirmed that the committee was aware of the Good Will Hunting script’s provenance, had checked into it, and had found no problems.

The rumors are all the stranger considering the well-documented history of the two young actor-screenwriters’ efforts to get the script made into a movie. They went through a year of rewrites—the story was initially a conspiracy thriller—before running into roadblocks at Castle Rock and finally landing a deal at Miramax.

Good Will Hunting pulled in nine Academy Award nominations, including the screenwriting nod, and has made almost $110 million in North America alone. Not bad for a class project.

Reuters/Variety

Bad man and Robin

Reynolds should win Oscar for porn producer role but bet on Williams

Sun movie writer Louis B. Hobson today kicks off a series previewing the major categories for next Monday’s Oscars. Today he looks at the competition for best supporting actor, which features the comeback kid, Burt Reynolds, and Hollywood heavyweight Robin Williams.
 
 Burt Reynolds is flattered by all the attention he is receiving in his bid for this year’s best supporting actor Oscar.
 
 He already has a Golden Globe for his performance as the porn producer in “Boogie Nights” and has been endorsed by every major critics’ organization in America.
 
 Critics are touting him as the front-runner in this category. Like the good-ol-boy he is, Reynolds is being realistic.
 
 ”There’s no question I have the critics in my corner this year, but they don’t vote,” Reynolds notes.
 
 ”Because he’s in Amistad and it was largely ignored, Anthony Hopkins is going to get the (African American) vote. Greg Kinnear will be carried quite a way on the coattails of Jack Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets” and Robin Williams is getting a major push from (Miramax Films) for “Good Will Hunting”.
 
 Reynolds is right on the money.
 
 The only nominee he doesn’t see as a threat is Robert Forster as the bail bondsman in Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown”.
 
 The irony is that if the Oscars weren’t largely a popularity contest, Forster would be Reynolds’ only real competition.
 
 Forster has been working for more than 30 years.
 
 Even he wouldn’t claim to have been acting for these three decades.
 
 Some of his films have been genuine dogs.
 
 ”They paid the rent and kept me from getting really depressed,” admits Forster, alluding to such gems as “Scanner Cop II” and “Satan’s Princesses”.
 
 Reynolds and Forster have much in common.
 
 They’ve stuck out careers that had a series of highs and lows. They gave their best even at the worst of times. Last year, they both found roles that tested their mettle.
 
 In Boogie Nights, Reynolds, 62, played porn producer Jack Horner not like some sleazy carpetbagger, but as man who believed in his mission.
 
 Forster, 56, found heart and purpose in a man who thought time had passed him by.
 
 As former U.S. president John Quincy Adams in Steven Spielberg’s slave-ship drama “Amistad”, Hopkins, 60, chewed up the scenery like the astute vaudevillian he is. But it was hardly great acting.
 
 Kinnear, 33, lucked out with his role as the battered gay artist in As Good As It Gets and, to his credit, he underplayed the man’s pain and flamboyance. It’s a commendable performance, but hardly stellar acting.
 
 For his troubled psychiatrist in Good Will Hunting, Williams, 46, is in full-beard mode. It’s the same earnest, comedian-in-chains performance he gave us in Awakenings, Being Human, Dead Again and sans beard in Dead Poets Society.
 
 But, as Reynolds astutely observes, Williams has the backing of Miramax Films, which has turned a little $20-million movie into a giant $120-million box-office phenomenon.
 
 Williams will probably win more for his impressive body of work than for this minor glimpse of the range of his enormous talent.
 
 WHO SHOULD WIN: BURT REYNOLDS FOR BOOGIE NIGHTS.
 
 WHO WILL WIN: ROBIN WILLIAMS FOR GOOD WILL HUNTING.

…GOOD WILL HUNTING

It was never meant to be a prizewinner. It was meant to jump-start the careers of the two terrific young actors who wrote it, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. And I think they will win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. (More about that, as they say, presently.) Full disclosure: I spent a day working with them on it, and thank God I didn’t damage their talent.

You know how some people will recommend a book by telling you, It’s a terrific read? Well, this is a terrific watch. Damn is going to be remembered for his performance for years, and AFLAC’s moment toward the end, alone on Damn’s porch, was the most moving in the picture. And as I sat there munching my popcorn, do you know what movie was in my head? SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. Why? Well, both Matt and Snow were orphans. Both had crappy manual jobs. Both were the least bit unusual in that she was the most beautiful woman in the universe, he the mostbrilliant man.

And they both had dreams. The handsome Prince answered Snow’s, while Matt had to be satisfied with Mini Driver, a Harvard senior on her way to Stanford Med. Better than ZaSu Pitts when you consider that Minnie is a) gorgeous, b) brilliant, c) with riches beyond counting. She also d) falls madly in love with Matt the minute she sees him out-smartass a smartass acquaintance of hers. Not to mention e) that her perfect love only swells as the story unwinds.

Now, I have met some Harvard girls…and they weren’t like that. But Minnie is an everyday creature compared to Robin Williams, who gets to play one of Hollywood’s all-time yummiest creations the shrink with only one patient! Robin was put on Earth for one reason alone: to cure Matt Damon. And how does he do that? How does he take a tormented genius and wash his pain away? It is so easy, sports fans, that I think we should do this to all the disturbed and sad people we meet each day. Just tell them this: “It’s not your fault.” That’s Robin’s trick, anyway.

Saying it once, of course, won’t do it. Matt is seriously fucked up. To cure any kind of mental torment, do it Robin’s way. Tell this to Mozart, the next time you see him, or to that homeless guy babbling onthe corner: “It’s not your fault.”

Pretty soon Matt is sobbing his pain away, and he and his shrink are hugging and making jokes, and God’s sure up there in his heaven.

Listen, I liked this scene. And I liked this movie. But I won’t voteit Best Picture.

Now to the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Affleck and Damn wrote a wonderful script, but they will win because they are Affleck and Damon, because all of us want to glow in their warmth come awards night. It’s just such a great story, dammit. Same reason Emma Thompson won. Shewrote a wonderful script, But I think the reason she beat out APOLLO 13 and BABE was because she is Emma Thompson the star.

In other words, the dancing-bear syndrome. This is the most grievously apparent with the Best Director award. When a star suddenly directs a quality film, the Academy goes nuts. “Ohhh, aren’t they wonderful!” the Academy says. “How beautiful they are, aren’t we lucky?”